Grieving 8 yr old boy hangs himself over mom

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/uk/Grieving-boy-8-kills-himself.4162237.jp

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This is one of the saddest stories of the many sad stories we hear every day. This boy in the United Kingdom lost his mom and his grandpa to cancer. He was loved and carefully watched at school, but nonetheless hung himself with his school tie at home where he lived with his grandma.

He's the same age as I was when my dad died of a heart attack.

But things are different today than they were in my day. People have less brothers and sisters, if any at all. So if they have a terrible loss like this boy had, they don't have siblings in their peer group to bond with and get through it together.

Also, the rapid pace of society and over stimulation makes even a moment or a day of sadness seem to last for an eternity. We are doing no favor to our children bringing them up in a society that does not teach optimism and fortitude. Yes, those qualities must be taught; they are not genetic or automatic. But instead today there is a "quick fix" and a "winner/loser" mentality, so that children (even those loved and supported as this boy) have little resilience to "slog it out" as the Brits used to call it. Ironically where children do show enormous endurance is enduring abusive home situations and neighborhoods. That is where they have to be little soldiers who shoulder the burden and march onward.

But when it comes to love, a huge extended family, and cautious long term emotional investment in the future, our society is the opposite of teaching those values. A child in a large traditional family can better cope with loss of even his loved mum because he can envision the day when he marries and has children of his own, remembering her. But it is all fragmentation and anti-family in the schools, media and society. If one is not on the computer, playing video games, being stimulated (or dulled to "endure") by substances, spending money, or being popular with the gang, then those seconds, minutes, hours and days of grief just drag on unbearably. In the old days children lived in large families with connection to the cycles of life through farming. They could bear the unbearable because they were doing so within a family that by its very existence and size spoke "optimism." Now even the most well meaning secular setting preaches fragmentation and depressive mentality, and even the smallest children are affected. This little boy and I were the same ages when we lost a parent to illness but we could not be more different than night and day. Already at eight I had comfort of full knowledge of my dad being in heaven, and also a commitment to life and having loved ones of my own when I grew up. This little boy, like so many children these days, were never given the structures for those connections. It is so very terribly sad. My prayers and condolences to his family, schoolmates and community, who I know have such genuine sorrow and grief.